Web 2.0 For Everyone!
August 17th, 2007 by Lou
I agree with Hugh that Web 2.0 is for everyone, although blogging may not be. Frankly, I really need it to be, since these tools are becoming the primary mechanisms for social interactions in my daily workday world.
I think we face the same kinds of barriers our great-grandparents did when the telephone was introduced into homes. It tool a long time before people integrated their use into their everyday lives. My wife, who is self admittedly “technologically challenged” couldn’t live without her email after a long and painful learning curve. I can’t really see her using Twitter the way I do, but maybe I’ll have to get her into it?
blogging, web 20
Great comparison about great-grandparents and telephone and web 2.0.
I think you make a valid point. You may also be interested in a recent article I did asking people how they would explain RSS to someone who is less than web savvy. http://www.jeffro2pt0.com/how-would-you-explain-rss/ I asked myself the other day, if I asked 10 random people a question about, lets say, Twitter, would they even know what Twitter was? I think maybe 1 out of 10 would know but it goes to show you that the only people who really get this Web 2.0 stuff are early adopters and web savvy people.
One of the things that could make this “computing revolution” a bit different than previous one is this social angle. It’s more than a little ironic that the geek, presumed to be socially inept, stands to be better connected than many of his peers.
The greatest demographic difference in usage for these technologies, like prior ones, is probably generational. Will the Web 2.0 phenomenon and impact extend outside of the workplace, more than prior evolutions? I think the extent and reach of this impact is what will differentiate it in the end. The “tsnf” reference in the cell phone commercial on television speaks to the sort of mind-bending impacts that may be in store for us.